The increasing use of opioid treatment agreements has prompted debate within the medical community about ethical challenges with respect to their implementation. The focus of debate is usually on the efficacy of OTAs at reducing opioid misuse, how OTAs may undermine trust between physicians and patients and the potential coercive nature of requiring patients to sign such agreements as a condition for receiving pain care. An important consideration missing from these conversations is the potential for racial bias in the current (...) way that OTAs are incorporated into clinical practice and in the amount of physician discretion that current opioid guidelines support. While the use of OTAs has become mandatory in some states for certain classes of patients, physicians are still afforded great leeway in how these OTAs are implemented in clinical practice and how their terms should be enforced. This paper uses the guidelines provided for OTA implementation by the states of Indiana and Pennsylvania as case studies in order to argue that giving physicians certain kinds of discretion may exacerbate racial health disparities. This problem cannot simply be addressed by minimising physician discretion in general, but rather by providing mechanisms to hold physicians accountable for how they treat patients on long-term opioid therapy to ensure that such treatment is equitable. There are no data in this work. (shrink)

The Descartes Dictionary is an accessible guide to the world of the seventeenth-century philosopher René Descartes. Meticulously researched and extensively cross-referenced, this unique book covers all his major works, ideas and influences, and provides a firm grounding in the central themes of Descartes' thought. The introduction provides a biographical sketch, a brief account of Descartes' philosophical works, and a summary of the current state of Cartesian studies, discussing trends in research over the past four decades. The A-Z entries include clear (...) definitions of the key terms used in Descartes' writings and detailed synopses of his works. Also included are entries noting philosophical influences, of both figures that influenced Descartes and those that he in turn influenced. For anyone reading or studying Descartes, rationalism, or modern philosophy more generally, this original resource provides a wealth of useful information, analysis, and criticism. Including clear explanations of often complex terminology, The Descartes Dictionary covers everything that is essential to a sound understanding of Descartes' philosophy. (shrink)

Recently, there has been a surge of interest in the lexicon. The demand for a fuller and more adequate understanding of lexical meaning required by developments in computational linguistics, artificial intelligence, and cognitive science has stimulated a refocused interest in linguistics, psychology, and philosophy. Different disciplines have studied lexical structure from their own vantage points, and because scholars have only intermittently communicated across disciplines, there has been little recognition that there is a common subject matter. The conference on which this (...) volume is based brought together interested thinkers across the disciplines of linguistics, philosophy, psychology, and computer science to exchange ideas, discuss a range of questions and approaches to the topic, consider alternative research strategies and methodologies, and formulate interdisciplinary hypotheses concerning lexical organization. The essay subjects discussed include: * alternative and complementary conceptions of the structure of the lexicon, * the nature of semantic relations and of polysemy, * the relation between meanings, concepts, and lexical organization, * critiques of truth-semantics and referential theories of meaning, * computational accounts of lexical information and structure, and * the advantages of thinking of the lexicon as ordered. (shrink)

The foundation for a system of morals, this 1749 work is a landmark of moral and political thought. Its highly original theories of conscience, moral judgment, and virtue offer a reconstruction of the Enlightenment concept of social science, embracing both political economy and theories of law and government.

How (Not) to Be Secular is what Jamie Smith calls "your hitchhiker's guide to the present" -- it is both a reading guide to Charles Taylor's monumental work A Secular Age and philosophical guidance on how we might learn to live in our times. Taylor's landmark book A Secular Age (2007) provides a monumental, incisive analysis of what it means to live in the post-Christian present -- a pluralist world of competing beliefs and growing unbelief. Jamie Smith's book (...) is a compact field guide to Taylor's insightful study of the secular, making that very significant but daunting work accessible to a wide array of readers. Even more, though, Smith's How (Not) to Be Secular is a practical philosophical guidebook, a kind of how-to manual on how to live in our secular age. It ultimately offers us an adventure in self-understanding and maps out a way to get our bearings in today's secular culture, no matter who "we" are -- whether believers or skeptics, devout or doubting, self-assured or puzzled and confused. This is a book for any thinking person to chew on. (shrink)

Prologue, invitation to thinking about God In the Hebrew Bible? -- Part I, questions about God? -- Why does God in the Bible have a body? -- What do God's body parts in the Bible mean? -- Why is God angry in the Bible? -- Does God in the Bible have gender or sexuality? -- Part II, questions about God in the world? -- What can creation tell us about God? -- Who-or what-is the Satan? -- Why do people suffer (...) according to the Hebrew Bible? -- Epilogue, God in the Bible and beyond. (shrink)

Fact-finding hearings may be held to determine disputed allegations of domestic violence in child contact cases in England and Wales, and can play a vital role for mothers seeking protection and autonomy from violent fathers. Drawing on the author’s empirical study, this article examines the implications for the holding of fact-finding hearings of judges’ and professionals’ understandings of domestic violence and the extent to which they perceive it to be relevant to contact. While more judges and professionals are developing their (...) understanding of domestic violence, the ambit of when and how it is considered relevant to contact has grown increasingly narrow, which suggests that many disputed allegations of domestic violence are disregarded and women and children continue to be put at risk from violent fathers. This bifurcated approach is likely to have significant implications for recent developments in this area of family law which are considered in this article. (shrink)

This title presents a comprehensive guide to interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) which is an increasingly popular approach to qualitative inquiry taught to undergraduate and postgraduate students today.

ABSTRACTThe standard view in philosophy of mind is that the way to understand the difference between perception and misperception is in terms of accuracy. On this view, perception is accurate while...

What exactly is hope and how does it influence our decisions? In How We Hope, Adrienne Martin presents a novel account of hope, the motivational resources it presupposes, and its function in our practical lives. She contends that hoping for an outcome means treating certain feelings, plans, and imaginings as justified, and that hope thereby involves sophisticated reflective and conceptual capacities. Martin develops this original perspective on hope--what she calls the "incorporation analysis"--in contrast to the two dominant philosophical conceptions (...) of hope: the orthodox definition, where hoping for an outcome is simply desiring it while thinking it possible, and agent-centered views, where hoping for an outcome is setting oneself to pursue it. In exploring how hope influences our decisions, she establishes that it is not always a positive motivational force and can render us complacent. She also examines the relationship between hope and faith, both religious and secular, and identifies a previously unnoted form of hope: normative or interpersonal hope. When we place normative hope in people, we relate to them as responsible agents and aspire for them to overcome challenges arising from situation or character. Demonstrating that hope merits rigorous philosophical investigation, both in its own right and in virtue of what it reveals about the nature of human emotion and motivation, How We Hope offers an original, sustained look at a largely neglected topic in philosophy. (shrink)

The Problem of Perception offers two arguments against direct realism--one concerning illusion, and one concerning hallucination--that no current theory of ...

This article suggests evidence for and reasons why prior acquisition may either facilitate or inhibit acquisition of a new construction. It investigates acquisition of the German passive and future constructions which contain a lexical verb with either the auxiliary sein “to be” or werden “to become”, and are related through these to potential supporting constructions. We predicted that a supported construction should be acquired earlier, faster, and unusually rapidly. An inhibited construction should show an extended depressed usage. We analyzed a (...) dense corpus of a German boy between 2;0 and 5;0. He acquired the sein- before the werden-passive. The former was supported by his prior acquisition of the sein copula, whereas the werden-passive itself supported one werden copula construction. He acquired the werden-future extremely slowly due to the hindrance of a semantically identical construction. These results fit with an emergentist approach in which apparently “sudden” acquisition is still due to gradual learning mechanisms. (shrink)

This article defends a theory of diffuse attention and distinguishes it from focal attention. My view is motivated by evidence from psychology and neuroscience, which suggests that we can deploy visual selective attention in at least two ways: by focusing on a small number of items, or by diffusing attention over a group of items taken as a whole. I argue that diffuse attention is selective and can be object‐based. It enables a subject to select an object to guide behavior, (...) albeit in a different way than focusing does. (shrink)

Put relationship-centered communication at the forefront of care Today, physicians face a hypercompetitive marketplace in which they must meet unique and complex patient needs as efficiently as possible. But in a culture prioritizing clinical outcomes above all, there can be a tendency to lose sight of one of the most critical aspects of providing effective care: the communication skills that build and foster physician-patient relationships. Studies have shown that good communication between doctors and patients and among all caregivers who interface (...) with patients directly results in better clinical outcomes, reduced costs, greater patient satisfaction, and lower rates of physician burnout. In Communication the Cleveland Clinic Way, Dr. Adrienne Boissy and her team tell the story of how Cleveland Clinic created and applied the R.E.D.E. to Communicate: Foundations of Healthcare program, making the world-renowned hospital system a leader in relationship-centered care. They provide a step-by-step guide for healthcare leaders and decision-makers to design, develop, and implement communication skills training in their own institutions. Learn how to: • Craft an effective, colleague-supported communication skills program to include veteran physicians, residents, and medical students • Leverage creative program design and data transparency to engage and facilitate staff physicians and advanced care providers • Identify common misperceptions and myths in healthcare communication and respond to them successfully • Cultivate a true sense of empathy—with patients and fellow caregivers alike—while maintaining professionalism In a field where difficult conversations and stressful relationships are commonplace, clinicians need a structured approach to enable them to deliver the best care possible. Communication the Cleveland Clinic Way is the blueprint for establishing a relationship-centered program that will improve patient experience, reinvigorate doctors’ passion for their work, and elevate any organization. (shrink)

In cases of identity crowding, a subject consciously sees items in a figure, even though they are presented too closely together for her to shift attention to each item. Block uses such cases to challenge the view that attention is necessary for consciousness. I argue that in identity crowding cases, subjects really do attend to the items. Specifically, they attend to the figure as a global object that contains the individual items as parts. To support this view, I provide evidence (...) that attention can be directed to a global object or a local object. My response helps to defend the view that attention is necessary for conscious perception. (shrink)

We ordinarily suppose that there is a difference between having and failing to exercise a rational capacity on the one hand, and lacking a rational capacity altogether on the other. This is crucial for our allocations of responsibility. Someone who has but fails to exercise a capacity is responsible for their failure to exercise their capacity, whereas someone who lacks a capacity altogether is not. However, as Gary Watson pointed out in his seminal essay ’Skepticism about Weakness of Will’, the (...) idea of an unexercised capacity is much more difficult to make sense of than it initially appears. The aim of ’Rational Capacities’ is to provide the needed explication of this idea. (shrink)

People with disabilities use more medical care and see health professionals more often than do those of the same age, ethnic group, or economic class who do not have impairments. An indisputable medical goal is.

Attention seems to raise a problem for pure representationalism, the view that phenomenal content supervenes on representational content. The problem is that shifts of attention sometimes seem to bring about a change in phenomenal content without a change in representational content. I argue that the representationalist can meet this challenge, but that doing so requires a new view of the representational content of perception. On this new view, the representational content of perception is always relative to a way of attending. (...) I call this the attention-indexed view of perceptual content. (shrink)

WE must first state the subject of our inquiry and the faculty to which it belongs: its subject is demonstration and the faculty that carries it out demonstrative science.

Ce bref texte en forme de manifeste rappelle que les mouvements de transformation sociale dirigés vers davantage de justice sont d’autant plus forts que leurs membres reconnaissent avec lucidité et compassion leurs propres implications dans les mécanismes générateurs de violences. Plutôt que des gestes de condamnation et d’annulation ( cancel ), ce sont donc des attitudes d’écoute, de soutien et de solidarité active qui sont requis.

It is gratifying that thoughtful philosophers and bioethicists like Mahowald and Nelson are continuing to address the objections to prenatal testing that have been made by disability scholars and advocates. But it is frustrating to see those objections presented in ways that reflect the doubts of those who reject them more than the intentions of those who make them, in ways that make those objections appear censorious toward pregnant women and prospective parents or naïve about nonverbal expression. We recognize that (...) disability critics share the responsibility for these misunderstandings, that their objections to prenatal disability testing have not always been made as clearly or consistently as they might have been. We therefore welcome this opportunity for clarification and rebuttal. Briefly, we will argue against Mahowald that it is not apparent how prospective parents could have a duty to potential offspring requiring them to prevent the birth of any child expected to have a life worth living. And we will remind Nelson that our primary concern is with the perpetuation of stigma; that even if any reason for abortion can be framed in terms of a trait of the fetus to be aborted, only certain reasons for abortion are based on the rejection of future children because of stigmatized traits. (shrink)

In this paper, we critically appraise institutions for people with disabilities, from residential facilities to outpatient clinics to social organizations. While recognizing that a just and inclusive society would reject virtually all segregated institutional arrangements, we argue that in contemporary American society, some people with disabilities may have needs that at this time can best be met by institutional arrangements. We propose ways of reforming institutions to make them less isolating, coercive, and stigmatizing, and to provide forms of social support (...) the larger society denies many people with disabilities. Although these reforms far fall far short of abolition, they draw heavily on the work of disability scholars and advocates who call for the complete replacement of institutional arrangements with systems of supported living. The consideration of non-ideal-solutions is useful not only in reforming existing institutional arrangements, but in bringing disability scholarship and advocacy to bear on bioethics, which has paid little attention to institutions for people with disabilities. We intend this paper to redress the neglect within mainstream bioethics of the complex ethical problems posed by institutions. (shrink)

Dans cette réflexion surgie des premières expériences de la pandémie du Covid-19, l’autrice met en écho nos peurs et nos réactions face aux dangers de la maladie et face aux actes de violence. Les condamnations sommaires et instantanées auxquelles les militant·es se livrent sur les réseaux sociaux reproduisent partiellement des dynamiques de lynchage dont il faut apprendre à davantage se méfier. Avec la distance de l’abstentiel, il est parfois plus facile de dénoncer ( call-out ) les mauvais comportements, que d’interpeler (...) et d’inclure ( call-in ) celleux qui ont fait du mal. Comment croire les survivant·es tout en restant abolitionnistes? Comment croire les survivant·es tout en pratiquant une justice transformatrice? (shrink)

This article addresses an issue overlooked in most of the literature on judicial review: the legitimacy of judicial review of a constitution's federal and structural provisions. Debates about the legitimacy of judicial review—at least as conducted throughout the Commonwealth—are usually focussed on rights. These debates appear to assume that the power of courts like the Australian High Court and the Canadian Supreme Court to interpret and enforce federal and structural provisions is unproblematic. This article tests that assumption and concludes that (...) those who hold democracy-based objections to constitutional rights should seriously reconsider, and perhaps oppose, federal and structural judicial review as well. (shrink)

What kind of animals are human beings? And how do our visions of the human shape our theories of social action and institutions? In Moral, Believing Animals>, Christian Smith advances a creative theory of human persons and culture that offers innovative, challenging answers to these and other fundamental questions in sociological, cultural, and religious theory. Smith suggests that human beings have a peculiar set of capacities and proclivities that distinguishes them significantly from other animals on this planet. Despite (...) the vast differences in humanity between cultures and across history, no matter how differently people narrate their lives and histories, there remains an underlying structure of human personhood that helps to order human culture, history, and narration. Drawing on important recent insights in moral philosophy, epistemology, and narrative studies, Smith argues that humans are animals who have an inescapable moral and spiritual dimension. They cannot avoid a fundamental moral orientation in life and this, says Smith, has profound consequences for how sociology must study human beings. (shrink)

A clearly written, authoritative introduction to Taylor's work.